Hohfeld on the duties in privileges and claims

Daniel Simão Nascimento

doi:10.4013/fsu.2018.192.05

Abstract

Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld was an American jurist who published a series of articles that were very important for 20th century analytical philosophy of right. Since they appeared, it has become common to distinguish between four kinds of right, one for each of the four ‘Hohfeldian incidents’: privileges (or liberties), claims, powers and immunities. Although Hohfeld’s theory has drawn much attention, very little of it has been directed to his concept of duty. In this article, I offer a clarification of this concept that takes into account both Hohfeld’s original intentions and the new uses that have been made of his theory. In section I, I analyze and clarify the definition of the concept of duty that we find in Hohfeld (1913) to show that it was employed in order to denote a legal obligation and that this use is purely descriptive. In section II, I discuss what kinds of duties may appear as correlatives of privileges and claims inside a Hohfeldian model. In section III, I conclude with a brief summary of the argument. Keywords: Hohfeld, rights, duties, privilegio, demanda.

Highlights

Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld was an American jurist who pu lished a series of articles between 1909 and 1917 that were very important for 20th century analytical philosophy of right
He is recognized as a major precursor to the deontic logic that was later formulated by Von Wright2
His two major contributions were the articles “Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Ap lied in Judicial Reasoning” (Hohfeld, 1913) and “Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Ap lied in Judicial Reasoning” (Hohfeld, 1917), in which he analyzed how jurists and judges use the word ‘right’ to eak of the rights of groups and individuals such as the right of free eech, the right to vote, the right to abort, etc

Summary

Introduction

Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld was an American jurist who published a series of articles that were very important for 20th century analytical philosophy of right.

Results

Conclusion